Event attendees fill out a worksheet that encourages them to visualize their lives at age 28– photo Parker Garlough
York News Times Reprint
Written by Parker Garlough
At Career Day, 170 York-area high school students explored careers they might pursue after graduation.
The event was held Tuesday by the York County Development Corporation (YCDC) at the Holthus Convention Center. Students were able to select from panels during which York-area professionals gave speeches and answered questions about their jobs.
The panels available were education; entrepreneurship; agriculture, natural resources and food; skilled and technical sciences; business, management and marketing; communications and informational systems; human services and government; manufacturing; and health sciences. The most popular panels were health care and education, according to a survey by YCDC.
The event also included a job fair. According to a YCDC survey, 97% of students reported speaking with at least one employer.
Some students knew exactly what they wanted to do when they graduate high school, but others were less sure.
“I’m jealous when you guys know exactly what you want to do, because I was that person who had no idea what I wanted to do,” Nebraska Correctional Center for Women Warden Angela Folts-Oberle said.
There’s one thing most students are confident about, though: They want to leave. When YCDC Economic Development Coordinator Grace Staehr asked who wanted to move away from York after graduation, most hands shot up. That’s in line with a wider pattern across the state: in 2024, more 18- and 19-year-olds moved out of Nebraska than into it.
Leaving is OK, Staehr said. She left her hometown as a young adult and ended up here.
“Some of you should leave,” Staehr said. “Please do. Go experience something bigger. It’s a beautiful world. Go to college somewhere else, try something new, travel and learn about the beautiful cultures out there.”
However, she urged them to remember that economic opportunity is waiting for them in York if they choose to come back.
“Lower cost of living equals more financial freedom,” Staehr said. “Skilled trade, manufacturing, and health care are in high demand … in our community, you are not applicant #472. You are visible. You are promotable.”
Others echoed that sentiment.
“Nebraska, on average, has 30 (thousand) to 40,000 job openings at any given time,” Collins Aerospace Senior Operations Manager Doug Rood said.
In response to the YCDC survey question, “After today, are you more likely to consider working in York County in the future?”, 15% of respondents said “yes,” and 68% said “maybe.”
Why this job?
Many panelists discussed the high demand in their industry, encouraging students to consider it.
“There’s a really large generation of baby boomers that is exiting the workforce, and they’re going to need a lot of health care,” York General Vice President of Human Resources & Development Bethany Childers said.
Education is another field in need of new employees.
“COVID hit the teaching profession hard,” York High School Principal Brian Gralheer said. “There’s a high demand for teachers. We want good people coming into the field.”
Another popular reason panelists gave for students to enter their industry was the satisfaction of knowing their work helps others.
“I just like helping people,” Epworth Family Resources Foster Care Specialist Stacey Kelly said. “It’s why I got into the field. I didn’t get into it to make a ton of money, because you just don’t.”
Bayer Crop Science Seed Production site lead John Havlet feels similarly.
“Helping people was what really I thrive on: solving problems, learning from them, learning together,” Havlet said. “That’s what I enjoy.”
For Max Country Radio Video and Digital Programmer Eric Allgood, enjoyment is one of the main draws of his position.
“It’s (a) lot of fun,” Allgood said. “And when you do it with people that you enjoy being around, it doesn’t feel like work at all.”
York University Digital Solutions Manager Jared Wiley values the flexibility his job allows him.
“I can work anywhere I want to work for 90% (of) my job … so I get to go to all my kids’ events,” Wiley said. “I get to go to different things across town, events that may happen during the day that a lot of people don’t get to go to. It’s a very flexible job.”
Nontraditional careers and pathways
Several panelists encouraged students to look beyond the obvious job options when selecting a career path.
“When people hear of an electric company, you think of the line technicians, guys climbing holes in … bucket trucks, making sure we have power on, but there’s a lot of other careers within NPPD,” NPPD Careers Outreach Specialist Kim Liebig said.
Even within well-known careers, there is often an abundance of specialties or specific roles.
“There are so many different types of nursing,” Childers said. “You can be an educator. You can be a clinic nurse. You can work in long-term care. You can work in schools. You can work for (a) dentist office. If you’re not succeeding in home care, maybe try a clinic setting. So there’s a variety.”
Renewed Horizon founder Heather Hultgrien reminded aspiring business owners that starting a nonprofit is another type of entrepreneurship.
“Typically, when you think entrepreneurship, most people go for for-profit businesses,” Hultgrien said. “I chose to go through nonprofits.”
Plus, many fields have more than one way to break into them, panelists said.
One traditional path to a career is by attending college.
“I would advocate for you all to get a degree … I do think it matters, and I do think it makes a positive impact,” Folts-Oberle said.
However, it has downsides.
“I went to Penn State for four-year school, racked up $40,000 in school debt,” Rood said. “I left with an engineering degree and a good job, but guess what? I still have to pay all that money back.”
Rood recommended apprenticeships as a way to avoid student debt.
“Our apprenticeships, they’re on-site 25 hours a week,” Rood said. “We pay for them to go to school 15 hours a week. That schooling is completely free, and they’re doing that all at the same time, over the course of two to three years.”
For GoodyPop owner Emory Conrad, it was nerve-wracking to be the only one of her friends who didn’t attend college, but she ultimately felt satisfied with her decision to purchase GoodyPop and become a small business owner directly after graduating high school.
“All my friends and everyone that I knew was going to college, and I just felt really distant and that I was maybe going down the wrong path,” Conrad said. “But in the end, I was confident in my choice and just had to accept that even though we’re taking two different career paths, that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. It just looks a little different.”
Regardless of the training or education you obtain, experience can be the best teacher.
“In radio, you have to mess up a lot so that you learn how to do things,” Allgood said. Because nobody just tells you the 8 million things to do to have a good broadcast.”
